> This is really a story about a celebrity's mental illness and public breakdown.
Devil's advocate: there's no way this isn't the case for Kanye, right? Why is this mental illness sparking up later in his life? Why was he able to achieve everything he's achieved 1996 -> 2012 (Roc-A-Fella -> The College Dropout -> My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy era) without these "mental illness" bouts?
I have bipolar disorder which is characterized by extreme highs and extreme lows. Ye is manic right now in my estimation. Bipolars like me and Ye have lives of periods of success and periods of failure. You can read about bipolar if you'd like to learn more.
My estimation is that he's schizophrenic (in addition to being bipolar -- they do often go hand in hand). I've seen not one but two people get dragged into the hell of that disease, and both began with buying into antisemitic conspiracy theories.
This is key to understanding bipolar: it has an "upswing" phase in which someone has more energy and less inhibition. Increased self-belief as well. It can, if you're lucky, be just the right thing to catapult someone into incredible creative works.
The risk is that risk-taking may not pay off, and the inhibitions may have been there for good reason. Not to mention that there's also a downswing phase which looks like depression and comes with elevated suicide risk.
I used to know a lady with Bipolar. She thought the highs were totally worth it, and she was self-aware enough when she was swinging into a low period, and she'd just isolate herself until she came out of it. She didn't like her medication because it dulled the highs.
After a few major life disasters (including getting married, and then having it annulled), she eventually figured out that the highs were fun but dangerous. I haven't talked to her in years, but she was reliably taking her meds to keep her even keel.
My friend was pretty self-aware though. Someone less so may not be able to see that their illness is the true cause of their life disasters.
Hopefully some day we can figure out a solution that can help brunt the lows without completely brunting the highs. Although people do dumb stuff on the high swing too.
He's diagnosed with bipolar back in 2016 and talks about refusing medication because it messes with his ability to create/be creative.
It's possible that he's exhibited symptoms for far longer but it was brushed aside under the guise of kooky genius. I mean, the Taylor Swift thing was, what, 2009?
It seemed pretty fair at the time, like I remember being confused by why it caused such a media furor. You could disagree, of course, but you could also see given the circumstances why someone would say it.
I'd definitely say it was fair at the time as that was around Hurricane Katrina and the vast majority of the most affected people at the time were low-income black people. IIRC some parts of the 9th Ward are still yet to recover from Katrina.....and that was 17 years ago.
> Why is this mental illness sparking up later in his life?
Anyone who has dealt with/supported folks suffering from mental illness (and I definitely qualify, there), will tell you that mental illness gets worse, as you get older.
A young man that compulsively washes his hands, may well end his life, flying around the world in a sterile airplane, keeping his piss in canopic jars.
You're acting like he hasn't had public outbursts before...
Ya know.
"George Bush doesn't care about Black People".
"Taylor, I'ma let you finish..."
MBDTF came out in 2010. That was around the beginning of social media entering the mainstream (Kanye joined Twitter in July 2010).
So up until MBDTF, he didn't have a device in his pocket that allowed him to broadcast his unfiltered thoughts to millions of people. Up until that point, his public image was likely carefully managed by his label and management. All of his interviews were probably overseen by them. They likely only allowed interviews where he was asked pre-approved questions and gave canned answers. If he went too far off script, his label likely stepped in.
It's clear now that he has a lot more freedom with handling his own image. He's been signed to his own label since 2016 which probably afforded him a lot more power over his career. He had a few moments prior to 2016 but he didn't really go off the deep until 2017.
TLDR: what you saw as stable behavior prior to 2017 or so was probably the result of a curated image created by his label and management.
One of the most common pop analyses of Kanye West is that the death of his mother in 2007 affected him deeply, and that he (essentially) goes on a mental health bender every year around the time she passed. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's not the most implausible explanation and does comport with his most recent behavior (since the anniversary of her death is a few weeks away).
That's not how mental illness works. I am not diagnosing Kanye, but look up the progression of bipolar disorder. It is truly terrifying and heartbreaking.
Whatever is going on in this individual case, Bipolar disorder is terrible. It can look like someone is "fine" for a long time, but then they aren't fine and people look for what changed, and what changed is progression of the disease.
It's really hard to talk about without adding stigmatization.
Listen to his interviews yourself. Any medium, including podcasts, are packaging a narrative for you to hear. For better or worse. Personally and I’m black I listened to his latest interview and his points are pretty strong, it becomes obvious how he is being painted in a false light after hearing the interviews for yourself then hearing other people use clips to say he’s mentally ill and crazy.
This wouldn't surprise me. I haven't listened to the interviews myself, but a lot of people here seem to base their claims on having read secondary sources, not primary sources. In other words, their view of reality is based on how a journalist decided to summarize a conversation that is often multiple hours long. I'm not sure this constitutes a strong enough chain of evidence to diagnose someone with a mental illness.
Would those be the points where he rehashes the same antisemitic tropes which have circulated for hundreds of years and every once in a while leads to the massacres of innocent people? Because if he doesn’t get an out due to mental illness he is just another little attention whore neonazi.
Could you suggest a recent interview as an example? I’d like to judge myself.
I’m of the opinion he’s both someone with good intentions with good points but who makes those points sideways. But also that he’s mentally I’ll so he’s losing the ability to communicate clearly. I also think Candace Owens is an untrustworthy person with only self serving intentions.
All hip hop artists (and most artists) are manic. A little bit of mania helps you make creative connections and clever rhymes. Too much mania turns you into Don Quixote.
Devil's advocate: there's no way this isn't the case for Kanye, right? Why is this mental illness sparking up later in his life? Why was he able to achieve everything he's achieved 1996 -> 2012 (Roc-A-Fella -> The College Dropout -> My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy era) without these "mental illness" bouts?